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Worms of Edena

Try as I might to ignore it
to rationalize something utterly beyond me
and make any attempt to call this normal
I know what has beset my path and called my doom.

Mayhaps I can call an aneurism or tumor
a migraine or the effects of my terrible fever
is wishing far too well of this so serious a cause.

No, I must not deny the wriggling,
the endless gnawing and constant repulsive
churning of flesh and gray matter deep
within my own cranium.

I can hear the whispers of those ancient things
to sense the unfathomable taint
of these fowl, vestigial creatures of yesteryear
is death in of itself.

These crawling parasites
leeches of sanity and reason
and implementors of that great mania
have taken up residents inside the mind.

Try as I might, there is no escape,
no poison to rend them low,
and certainly no attempt at removal
of these putrid pink slugs.

They have made my mind their home
to feast upon my thoughts and hopes
all the while filling up that empty space remaining
soon they shall have all of the skull to themselves.

And where I will be left,
once my brain has been suckled dry,
usurped by a fat, godless worm
is no great mystery.

Even now, as memory is drained from me
the folds of my brain spread wide
and shredded inside out
I know what awaits me in the end.

Long after my mind is but a distant impression
and the worm has plunged its syringe-like tail
deep into that last vestige of my cerebellum
and I am made a beast,
I shall spread my disease.

The worm will well up within the skull,
its young spewing constantly
from a womb of infinite eggs
to feast upon their own matriarch.

And once it is gone on so long
the skull shall crack like eggshell,
the skin fall away as autumn leaves
and that little visceral remaining
will trickle like droplets in a spring rain.

From that mass of rot and decay,
from that mind that had become a hive,
from that brain that became sinful and animalistic
from the host will the maddening things shall spread.

And to each who had heard our voice
in life or death, shall become host
to seeds of insanity of that ilk
and those shall beget the newborn maggots.

They will burrow into the minds
of new hosts through their vectors
invisible and unstoppable
not unlike a coming storm.

And once within
the growing parasites will devour the saplings
emboldened by that strength
they will grow large
as their forebearer did.

Endlessly, the cycle will repeat
the worms seizing new vessels,
glutting themselves on further suffering,
and breeding in that misery.

I could end it now if I chose,
to smash my head wide,
and remove the ever-growing
worm of Edena, but it would be fruitless.

To finish now would be meaningless,
the juvenile worm would find be stalwart
enough so to find a new host
and their madness would only be the worse.

It is not a noble action I take now
to shoulder the burden of this parasite
to prevent one from suffering
a more acute nightmare of this scourge.

Instead, I doom untold numbers
to be victim and host to this mania
and to force them to propagate further
this wretched tiding no one beg for.

But the Worms of Edena
have been with us for so long,
to have preceded us and
to now succeed us, is their legacy.

Who am I,
to divine that these things
should expire and become extinct
because of their true nature?